it calls me on and on
by vega-de-la-lyre
Summary: Olivia's very presence is wrong here.


In one inconceivably complex cosmos, whenever a creature was faced with several possible courses of action, it took them all, thereby creating many distinct temporal dimensions and distinct histories of the cosmos. Since in every evolutionary sequence of the cosmos there were very many creatures, and each was constantly faced with many possible courses, and the combinations of all their courses were innumerable, an infinity of distinct universes exfoliated from every moment of every temporal sequence in this cosmos.  
_**Starmaker**, by Olaf Stapledon_

There is a universe where Elvis is still alive.  
_Alan Guth_

* * *

Olivia's very presence is wrong here.

That is the only way she knows how to describe it. She does not belong in this universe. And she knows, better than most, exactly how much she does not belong; she's seen the evidence herself in her universe, watched the fabric of the world bending and glowing around Peter, felt the tug in her gut of a great balance unsettled. She cannot trace the same disturbances here, but she knows in her bones that the very fact of her existence here is all wrong, corrupted and unnatural, and that sooner or later –

Well, sooner or later, the world will find its level again.

And she doesn't think it will include her.

* * *

(It happens sooner.)

* * *

The nightmares start within the first few days of her return to this world's Fringe team. She's in the shower after a long day of death and violence, scrubbing the blood out of her hair until she's too tired to lift her arms any higher and simply leans against the wet tiled walls, eyes closed, just for a brief second.

That second stretches on and she finds herself

_riding shotgun with Charlie in a police cruiser in New York. They are, she guesses, partners, not FBI or DoD but police officers, and this is not New York but New Amsterdam, and her hair is long and black, but for all that it is not so different from what she's known – no wormholes or telepaths or chimeras in sight – and, really, this is not so bad, she thinks (cautiously, a little hopefully)._

_When the day is done she and Charlie head out of the station together. Olivia tugs her hair free of her ponytail, letting it fall over her purple scarf as they walk, and when they turn into the parking garage she stops still, laughter dying on her lips._

_John is waiting for her, leaning against the hood of her car._

_"Thought I'd meet you here, hon," he says, pushing himself away from the car, coming forward to kiss her on her cheek. "You up for dinner?"_

_"You two have a good night," Charlie says, touching her shoulder and sketching a brief goodbye in the air as he heads off to his own car. Olivia stares after him, dumbstruck, and then looks back at John; he is smiling, blue eyes wrinkled and happy._

Olivia snaps her eyes open and pushes herself away from the wall of the shower.

* * *

The dream sticks in her head all the next day.

They are tracking a case overseas so Olivia doesn't make it home to her apartment but finds herself in a cabin on an overnight zeppelin to Munich instead, Charlie beside her, Lincoln Lee and Astrid sitting opposite, Broyles prowling the corridor restlessly. Lee has bunched his jacket up for a pillow, already snoring, mostly-healed burned face turned away from them all. Astrid is sitting perfectly still, perfectly awake, staring blankly ahead of her. Charlie is going through their dossier on the case and Olivia spends half her time reading over his shoulder, half tucked pensively into her corner of the seat. She doesn't think she'll sleep – the sounds and sensation of the zeppelin in flight are still too alien and strange – but she does.

_Someone is sobbing._

_Olivia sits up on her cold narrow bench of a bed. Her room – if you could call it that – is no more than a square cell of pallid concrete; the fourth wall is barred with black iron, opening onto a poorly-lit corridor._

_The sound is coming from somewhere down the corridor._

_Olivia stands and moves to her cell door, hands curling around the bars. She listens intently; it is Walter, she is sure of it._

_"Walter?" she calls. Her voice echoes strangely; the fluorescent lights of the hall flicker and fade. "Is that you?"_

_"Peter," he is sobbing. "Peter."_

_A chill goes down her spine. She lets go of the bars with fear-stiff fingers and sits down on her bench again, tucking her feet up beneath her._

Across the way, Lee has woken up and is eyeing her oddly.

"You okay, Liv?"

She realises her face is wet with tears.

"Yeah," she says, wiping her sleeve across her face, hoping the dim nighttime lighting of their cabin will hide the evidence from the others. "I'm fine, Lincoln."

* * *

She is hollow-eyed and distracted with sleeplessness all the next day.

They put them up that night in a sparse British barracks cleared especially for their use. Olivia is a little afraid to sleep, afraid of what might find her tonight, but even the hard camp bed and the buzz of noise outside can't keep her awake after the exhaustions of their long day of post-disaster cleanup.

_Olivia opens her eyes to a world of hazy golden-orange light. Her hand is outstretched before her, as if she was suspended in motion just before she awoke in this world. This is new; curiously, she tries to move her finger and ball her hand into a fist._

_She can't._

_It takes a moment for her to realise what's happened, what the strange quality to the amber light means, and then she tries to draw breath to scream._

_But she can't do that either._

When she wakes up this time she barely manages to stumble into the shared barracks bathroom before she vomits. When she's done she sweeps her hair away from her sweaty neck with shaking fingers and waits until the visceral terror gripping her chest with iron-hard fingers subsides, resting her forehead against cool porcelain as she closes her eyes. Her hip is throbbing from where she'd banged it off the doorframe in her haste; the taste in her mouth is sour and acidic.

* * *

They make it home (_home_; Olivia's insides coil with unease at that thought) late the next night and are told to take the following day, a Monday, off, a day of leave for their special exertions in the line of duty.

All the tea in the world cannot keep her awake, though she stays up till three in a valiant effort to fight her body's protests.

_The sky above is a sickly yellow, the pavement below cracked and buckled. Olivia's breathing is strangely loud in her ears until she plucks at the black thing bracing her face and realises that it is a gas mask._

_Someone is speaking beside her. She turns; the air is dry and hot on her face._

_"We have to keep going," Astrid says, tugging at Olivia's sparse woollen sleeve. Her voice is muffled through her own gasmask. "They must've been tipped off about where we are, they'll be here any minute – "_

_No sooner are the words out of her mouth than a flash of light blinds Olivia and the wind whips up her hair and then suddenly they are surrounded by a ring of black uniformed-and-helmeted soldiers, scarlet stars on their shoulders, guns aimed at Olivia and Asttrid._

_The leader of the troops pulls his own mask away from his face; it is Peter._

_"Olivia," he says. His face is perfectly blank but his eyes are wide and devastated. He stretches out a gloved hand towards her; she stares at it. "Olivia, you have to come with us now – please –"_

The rest of her night is spent in a lonely vigil on her couch, wrapped in a throw, all the lights in her apartment – the other Olivia's apartment – doused in blackness. She wishes she had Walter here to explain it all to her, blackboards of splintering universes in chalk, scientific technobabble directed at her till her ears are bleeding.

(There is no one, here, to talk to about it.

She misses Peter like he is a chunk carved from her heart with a paring knife.)

* * *

The effects of the dreams don't go unnoticed.

She doesn't know if it's Charlie who finally spills on her, or whether it's Lee, but when she comes in for work on Tuesday morning she's told to report to the team psychiatrist.

"Insomnia," is all she says, feet together, arms in her lap, presenting a face of bland innocence like she's been called to the office by her school principal. "I'm dealing with it."

The woman raises an eyebrow. "Are you really?'

_She's lying on her back in a bed of ferns._

_Olivia stares up blankly. The world around her is a dizzyingly bright green, fresher than any forest she's seen before, sunlight pouring through cracks in the thick canopy of leaves. She pushes herself upright, hand sinking into the lush damp soil, and takes in her surroundings; apart from a mosquito buzzing in her ear the place is utterly silent and still._

_She moves to stand and then freezes; facing her through the trees is a dinosaur, something like one of the raptors from Jurassic Park – except there is a scarlet of yellow feathers fanning out from behind its head and it is cocking its head at her curiously._

_It chitters and takes a step forward, bloodstained talons lifting. Olivia doesn't move, doesn't exhale; would know how to even if she could._

_She misses her gun._

Olivia wakes to find her hand on the cool barrel of the gun shoved under her pillow. The tension thrumming through her body relaxes; only a little.

* * *

They get worse.

For the next several nights she dreams successively of:

_a frozen landscape under black skies, devoid of light and life altogether;_

_an Earth with such heavy gravity she is bowed down to the ground with the weight of it, gasping for breath and thinking her spine might snap in half;_

_and a world that spins on exactly the same as her own, except that she was murdered at the age of eleven by her stepfather, and as she traces her fingers over the carved letters of her name on her gravestone she is left wondering which is worse, to know that the world would be changed for the worse for her death or to know that her death would have no effect on it whatsoever;_

and on and on until she finds herself in Secretary Bishop's office – she cannot think of him as Walter, because he is _not_ Walter, not even close – gripping her knees while her sheet of auburn hair swings in front of her eyes, head bowed.

(Olivia hates this hair. It makes her feel even less of herself, especially since she doesn't even know who she is anymore; some nights she wakes from her dreams only to think she's fallen into another, an acutely horrifying sensation.)

She steels her nerves and lifts her head. It takes a great effort; she is weary, so weary she does not know how she is still walking and talking.

"You have to help me get home," she says.

He leans forward, elbows on his desk, fingers steepled. "And why do I have to do that, Ms Dunham?"

_Because I am going crazy_, she thinks, or _because I think being here is killing me_. She opens her hands and says, "Because I don't belong here, and – look, I just – I need to go back – "

He watches her without speaking.

She closes her eyes and wishes herself home but all she sees behind her eyelids is a pulsing, shifting kaleidoscope of horrors and marvels, worlds she's only dreamed of, worlds she'd never wish on her worst enemy.

She opens her eyes again.


End file.
